Hyundai Motors Will Reportedly No Longer Develop Internal Combustion Engines

[s130]

See: https://interestingengineering.com/...um=mailing&utm_campaign=Newsletter-30-12-2021

 

[StevenRB45]

See: https://interestingengineering.com/...um=mailing&utm_campaign=Newsletter-30-12-2021

I thought most manufacturers had made this announcement at this point, or it was least implicit in announcements of "All our vehicles will be electrified by a given year".

Other than Mazda bless them..."we're going to make an inline 6 rwd saloon because we're convinced 1990 is back in fashion" Of course noisy people on the Internet love it...but if sales figures prove anything those people don't buy new cars.

 

[DaveMcT]

"Electrified" simply means adding hybrid motor and small battery to the existing engine powered range. It's a complex emissions solution that does not solve the problems of using engines and nobody buys a hybrid for its own sake. Used values will absolutely collapse.

Fiat have not developed a new engine since the FIRE came out in the 1980s. It has been highly successful and continually updated but it's not fundamentally new. Even the MultiAir is a clever adaptation. The MultiJet diesel was probably the biggest upgrade and TBH that really is a jewel of an engine. What a shame diesels have turned out to be such a bad idea.

5th Gear TV prog recently covered the new Mazda MX30 EV which has "suicide style" rear doors (a la Mazda Coupe). But it's clearly an engine car adapted for electric power.
The claimed range is low, so actual range will be even worse.
The rear doors cannot be opened from inside the car. Presenters said the back seat felt claustrophobic.
The front end is way too long with huge space where the engine used to be.
It's a dud.

 

[StevenRB45]

"Electrified" simply means adding hybrid motor and small battery to the existing engine powered range. It's a complex emissions solution that does not solve the problems of using engines and nobody buys a hybrid for its own sake. Used values will absolutely collapse.

Fiat have not developed a new engine since the FIRE came out in the 1980s. It has been highly successful and continually updated but it's not fundamentally new. Even the MultiAir is a clever adaptation. The MultiJet diesel was probably the biggest upgrade and TBH that really is a jewel of an engine. What a shame diesels have turned out to be such a bad idea.

5th Gear TV prog recently covered the new Mazda MX30 EV which has "suicide style" rear doors (a la Mazda Coupe). But it's clearly an engine car adapted for electric power.
The claimed range is low, so actual range will be even worse.
The rear doors cannot be opened from inside the car. Presenters said the back seat felt claustrophobic.
The front end is way too long with huge space where the engine used to be.
It's a dud.

Fiat developed the 1.0 firefly engine very recently. It's available the latest Pandas if memory serves although it's likely to be killed for the ubiquitous puretech, which they are adding a timing chain to at the next update.

Most manufacturers have recently released a small petrol engine with a turbo..these are likely the last engines we'll get. There will be evolution of them while it remains cost effective..but most are about as good as they'll get and it's not cost effective to develop another.

The MX30 in other markets is similar to the Hyundai Ioniq...in that it comes in three different flavours. So traditional petrol, electric with a rotary range extender or full electric. For some reason they decided to only release the weakest version of the car in the UK...gen 1 Nissan Leaf specs are not acceptable in a new and not particularly cheap car, with a range extender it would have been vaguely competitive if still 8-10 years behind.

 

[DaveMcT]

During the 1990s, Ford worked on a two stroke using speaker coil direct injection with at least 1000 under test for the original Ka. Haynes have one in their museum. It was clean and efficient, but it was pulled at the last moment and the car was fitted with a the old four-stroke last seen in early Escorts.
Rotax right now have a very clean, powerful two stroke that's used in the BRP Skidoo. 160bhp from 800cc with plenty of mid range grunt. Why is that not being used in cars? It's certainly not emissions because it easily exceed the USA EPA rules for off-road engines which have to be extremely clean.
What happened to the Konisegg Freevalve? 20% reduction in weight and parts, 20% better fuel consumption and a 1600 capable of 240 bhp (IIRC). Nobody was interested. Now it's too late.
The Wankel rotary was dead end with poor combustion and poor thermodynamics. But the Liquid Piston (silly name) swapped the rotor and stator shapes. It has a triangle stator with three combustion chambers and three spark plugs which carries a flattened oval rotor. Combustion is clean and efficient with a longer blowdown period than it has than compression. It's been completely ignored for bikes and cars.
The best we have had is adaptations of the same old same old four stroke using the same basic block, cranks and pistons. Heads get adapted for variable timing and turbos added but there's nothing really new.
Then Tesla comes along and wipes the floor with cars that have a longer service life and much lower running costs. Big Auto has lived on its old names for far too long and now they are looking down the barrel of the EV gun.

 

[AndyRKett]

Interesting, it’s likely only a matter of time before other
Companies follow suit.

Now it’s unlikely that companies would plough millions into developing any new engines anyway, but there might already be some on the drawing board that need finishing.

Even manufacturers can see how much cheaper an electric motor is, compared to the very complex petrol and Diesel engines they now have to make to meet emissions targets. Stands to reason they will soon all announce they are not making new ICE engines.

It’s unlikely all ICE engines will stop being built because they will still be needed in other areas, like the 1.3 multijet diesel used to be used as a starter motor on huge industrial engines

 

[DaveMcT]

The 1.3 MultiJet is an excellent example of how to make a very strong engine with minimal production costs. But as Andy says, the real costs happen with emissions and fuel consumption targets. Turbos, variable valve timing, catalysts, exhaust gas filters (which will soon be needed on petrol engines), ever more complex computers, etc, etc. The one mistake was using a single row cam chain which is its Achilles heel.

I can see the MJ continuing in all sorts of vehicles for use where there is no EV charging infrastructure. I believe it still has great potential. The layered construction lends itself to electronic valve operation. Cam and valve rocker carriers replaced with valve actuators and no need for the cam chain.

Fiat 1.3 MultiJet / Opel 1.3 CDTI - diesel engine - MLFREE

1.3 Multijet engine. The 1.3 MultiJet is one of the smallest automotive diesel engines

mlfree.com

 

[chris3234]

"Electrified" simply means adding hybrid motor and small battery to the existing engine powered range. It's a complex emissions solution that does not solve the problems of using engines and nobody buys a hybrid for its own sake. Used values will absolutely collapse.

Fiat have not developed a new engine since the FIRE came out in the 1980s. It has been highly successful and continually updated but it's not fundamentally new. Even the MultiAir is a clever adaptation. The MultiJet diesel was probably the biggest upgrade and TBH that really is a jewel of an engine. What a shame diesels have turned out to be such a bad idea.

5th Gear TV prog recently covered the new Mazda MX30 EV which has "suicide style" rear doors (a la Mazda Coupe). But it's clearly an engine car adapted for electric power.
The claimed range is low, so actual range will be even worse.
The rear doors cannot be opened from inside the car. Presenters said the back seat felt claustrophobic.
The front end is way too long with huge space where the engine used to be.
It's a dud.

They have the new firefly engine that came out in 2016

The 1.3 MultiJet is an excellent example of how to make a very strong engine with minimal production costs. But as Andy says, the real costs happen with emissions and fuel consumption targets. Turbos, variable valve timing, catalysts, exhaust gas filters (which will soon be needed on petrol engines), ever more complex computers, etc, etc. The one mistake was using a single row cam chain which is its Achilles heel.

I can see the MJ continuing in all sorts of vehicles for use where there is no EV charging infrastructure. I believe it still has great potential. The layered construction lends itself to electronic valve operation. Cam and valve rocker carriers replaced with valve actuators and no need for the cam chain.

Fiat 1.3 MultiJet / Opel 1.3 CDTI - diesel engine - MLFREE

1.3 Multijet engine. The 1.3 MultiJet is one of the smallest automotive diesel engines

mlfree.com

Definitely surprised there has been multiair type device fitted to a diesel engine to improve emissions ect

 

[AndyRKett]

Emissions on Diesels are already much much lower than Petrol cars hence why no one is trying to get CO2 emissions any lower on diesels, the main draw back of diesels is the other stuff they pump out, VVT is not going to fix that!

you can use a small diesel engine to start a much much bigger diesel engine, but in the future electric cars are definitely going to be replacing electric cars. There are plenty of places in the world where the petrol/diesel infrastructure is not good and is far worse than our electric infrastructure but people cope.

Given that Fiat have only produced the 1 litre engine in recent years and the Twin air about 12 years ago, I can't imagine at this time there are any more Fiat diesel engines in the pipe line to come out in the future. given the roughly 8 year cycle between new engine releases, and the ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 and a ban on hybrids from 2035, I don't think any manufacturers will be planning to release any new internal combustion engines in the UK in the next 8 years unless its already close to completion, we'll just see updates to existing engines now.

look back far enough in history and you'll see they have electric cars in Victorian times, but back then there wasn't so much money to be made from charging a battery compared to selling oil especially in the states when oil production was taking off.

The multijet is very popular in India and south America, I get a massive amount of YouTube hits still from those places on my videos for the multijet engine, but even then fiat have stopped making these engines for cars in those countries.

Only two fiat models I would consider right now are the Panda Cross 4x4 with the multijet engine, still some late models ~2018 knocking about, and the 500x with the 2.0L diesel and 9 speed auto box. there is literally nothing exciting/interesting about any of the new fiats about now

....... unless you really want a highly strung 1 litre engine with oodles of turbo lag in a 1400KG SUV

 

[Popitinpete]

My next car will be a 1969 chrysler with a 7.2 litre V8 so I fear I can't comment

 

[mj2k]

During the 1990s, Ford worked on a two stroke using speaker coil direct injection with at least 1000 under test for the original Ka. Haynes have one in their museum. It was clean and efficient, but it was pulled at the last moment and the car was fitted with a the old four-stroke last seen in early Escorts.
Rotax right now have a very clean, powerful two stroke that's used in the BRP Skidoo. 160bhp from 800cc with plenty of mid range grunt. Why is that not being used in cars? It's certainly not emissions because it easily exceed the USA EPA rules for off-road engines which have to be extremely clean.
What happened to the Konisegg Freevalve? 20% reduction in weight and parts, 20% better fuel consumption and a 1600 capable of 240 bhp (IIRC). Nobody was interested. Now it's too late.
The Wankel rotary was dead end with poor combustion and poor thermodynamics. But the Liquid Piston (silly name) swapped the rotor and stator shapes. It has a triangle stator with three combustion chambers and three spark plugs which carries a flattened oval rotor. Combustion is clean and efficient with a longer blowdown period than it has than compression. It's been completely ignored for bikes and cars.
The best we have had is adaptations of the same old same old four stroke using the same basic block, cranks and pistons. Heads get adapted for variable timing and turbos added but there's nothing really new.
Then Tesla comes along and wipes the floor with cars that have a longer service life and much lower running costs. Big Auto has lived on its old names for far too long and now they are looking down the barrel of the EV gun.

Agreed, though nothing really wrong with the Wankel-Froede engine other than it was running on the wrong fuel; because of the unusual shape of the combustion chamber it needs a fuel which burns with a really slow flame front unlike petrol, which burns pretty much instantly, wasting much of the power and causing poor emissions in the rotary engine. Creating a different fuel would have fixed most of the Wankel engine issues back in the 70s once Mazda had worked out how to stop the apex seals wearing so fast, but by then NSU had tarnished the image of the engine so badly it was pretty much dead in the water. GM dropped it like a hot brick, it was banned from motorsport, Citroen (NSU's partner) went bust, were taken over by Peugeot and the Wankel in their Birotor was replaced with a standard engine to become the GS, and VW (who had bought out the even-more-defunct NSU) killed the rotary engine in the RO-80, fitted a water cooled engine from Auto Union (who they had also recently taken over) and called it the K70, the forerunner of VW / Audi's unexpectedly successful cars in the 70s. So the only company left working on them was Mazda, and nobody's going to do any work on fuel development for a tiny Japanese car manufacturer, and I suspect the 'liquid piston' will meet the same fate as the rotary engine and Mazda's later Miller-cycle engined cars, i.e. virtual oblivion...

Once the big manufacturers have set off down a path, no matter how stupid (e.g. common rail diesels which turned out to be far more dangerous than their dirty, slow, soot-blowing, ultra-reliable forebears, which could run on unrefined rapeseed oil with minimal modification) and their pressure groups start whispering in politicians' ears over a nice lunch, the path is pretty much set. But Dieselgate blew a big hole in that cosy 'clean diesel' image which sold lots of cars for the manufacturers and lots of diesel for the petrochem companies (common rails won't run on unrefined vegetable oil), and following the success of Tesla, all the big manufacturers have jumped on the EV bandwagon.

So at the moment the new path is EVs; it remains to be seen if that's a great idea or a really dumb one like pushing everyone towards common rail diesels, but we'll find out over the next few years. At least companies like Hyundai are taking it seriously and developing whole new platforms around the EV; after all with an EV there's none of the usual constraints with car design like having an engine at the front, a fuel tank / exhaust pipe at the back, and a gearbox somewhere; all those bits can be dispensed with pretty much completely which should hopefully lead to some interesting clean slate designs over the next few years, and maybe with a bit of luck a few sports cars with really spectacular handling from their low slung batteries and perfectly balanced bodies...

Or maybe 4x4s with a motor on each wheel, attached to the body by telescopic rams to allow them to go pretty much anywhere, or ultra-manoeuverable single / 2 wheeled city cars with a gyroscope to keep them stable, and a drive-in phone-charger style cradle to charge them and stop them falling over when parked. Or long distance cars which join together on motorways like a train to minimize the fuel used? I think the days of the conventional big, fat, heavy SUV are numbered once the manufacturers really start to think outside the 2 boxes with a wheel on each corner format.

 

[DaveMcT]

I can see there being two types of electric car. A simple box for self-driving taxis that will drive people around town at low costs (maybe) per mile and private cars with good aerodynamics and moderate batteries (like Tesla). There will be niche markets for engines in trucks and vans but eventually even they will go electric. Big lumps like the new Hyundai Ionic are just too big for European roads. It wont be that much, but looks a foot wider than most cars on the road. It's enormous. Unfortunately small cars dont lend themselves to going EV. The energy savings (per mile) are not huge over larger cars but there's no space for larger batteries. I think the days of small Fiats are very numbered. Cars about the size of Jeep Renegade are likely to be the smallest we can get.

I suspect Tesla stung themselves with the CyberTruck as they had no idea how to make it for mass production but now have a million pre-orders. Time will tell on that. But meantime they are making a killing with Model 3 and Model Y.

 

[s130]

Agreed, though nothing really wrong with the Wankel-Froede engine other than it was running on the wrong fuel; because of the unusual shape of the combustion chamber it needs a fuel which burns with a really slow flame front unlike petrol, which burns pretty much instantly, wasting much of the power and causing poor emissions in the rotary engine.

The Wankel Engine ...... fond memories

My dad, Research Chemist, (RIP) worked for Shell and Exxon/Esso for most of his life and lubrication was his speciality. He worked on developing additives to try to solve the Wankel engines problems with rotor tip wear. At home he had a demonstration desktop Wankel toy but what was really impressive were the 100s of ultra high resolution colour pictures of combustion chamber walls and rotor tips taken of test engines at various mileages with different lubricant mixes/additives. Automatic Transmission Fluids were also his speciality for which he and a fellow colleague developed the "Clutch Pack Test Rig" which formed the basis of SAE Standards/Specification development and testing.

When you have seen this sort of research data and amount of research that goes into just developing different lubricants for different applications and problems you realise that oil is not just oil. Fascinating!

I don't think my dad ever overcame the shock and horror of his son getting Grade 9 in his "O" Level chemistry

 

[Rocinante]

Unfortunately small cars dont lend themselves to going EV. The energy savings (per mile) are not huge over larger cars but there's no space for larger batteries. I think the days of small Fiats are very numbered. Cars about the size of Jeep Renegade are likely to be the smallest we can get.

There's a 500e with a quoted 199mile range, which will presumably improve as the technology does. I'm not sure why you think small cars will disappear.

 

[vexorg]

"Electrified" simply means adding hybrid motor and small battery to the existing engine powered range. It's a complex emissions solution that does not solve the problems of using engines and nobody buys a hybrid for its own sake. Used values will absolutely collapse.

Fiat have not developed a new engine since the FIRE came out in the 1980s.

I thought the 5 cylinder engines were a 90's thing

Hybrid should've worked better than it does, the average hybrid is not much better for mpg than a modern diesel.
I'm more suprised they never had a different arrangement for the hybrid, where a smaller engine ran at maximum efficiency point just to charge the battery when it needed it. It would make sense in areas where charging just isn't possible. And where no longer needed, take the engine out the boot as a full unit.

 

[Didge3]

I thought the 5 cylinder engines were a 90's thing

Hybrid should've worked better than it does, the average hybrid is not much better for mpg than a modern diesel.
I'm more suprised they never had a different arrangement for the hybrid, where a smaller engine ran at maximum efficiency point just to charge the battery when it needed it. It would make sense in areas where charging just isn't possible. And where no longer needed, take the engine out the boot as a full unit.

My Ampera is more or less what you're describing although it is a parallel hybrid not series (where the engine can also drive the wheels not just run as a generator). It has a 75hp 1.4 petrol engine that runs at high load maximising its efficiency, a series hybrid like the BMW i3 ReX is a nice idea having a small generator to top up but it's much less efficient when you need to run on petrol as the conversion of petrol > mechanical force > AC electricity > DC battery, is very lossy compared to just driving the wheels with the engine.
Admittedly both of these cars are closer to EVs than the typical hybrids Toyota have been churning out for decades with significantly larger batteries and can run without the need for an engine at all. Ultimately EV is going to have to be the way forward and messing about with hybrids isn't a long term thing, the UKs charging network needs significant improvement as the cars themselves are getting there in terms of charging speed and range but the public access chargers are far behind.
It's certainly not ready for the masses, mostly the prohibitive entry costs but another 5-10 years we'll hopefully see significant change

 

[mj2k]

The Wankel Engine ...... fond memories

My dad, Research Chemist, (RIP) worked for Shell and Exxon/Esso for most of his life and lubrication was his speciality. He worked on developing additives to try to solve the Wankel engines problems with rotor tip wear. At home he had a demonstration desktop Wankel toy but what was really impressive were the 100s of ultra high resolution colour pictures of combustion chamber walls and rotor tips taken of test engines at various mileages with different lubricant mixes/additives. Automatic Transmission Fluids were also his speciality for which he and a fellow colleague developed the "Clutch Pack Test Rig" which formed the basis of SAE Standards/Specification development and testing.

When you have seen this sort of research data and amount of research that goes into just developing different lubricants for different applications and problems you realise that oil is not just oil. Fascinating!

I don't think my dad ever overcame the shock and horror of his son getting Grade 9 in his "O" Level chemistry

I did a bit of work with a combustion engineer acquaintance about 20 years ago, he was purely theoretical (he worked as a university lecturer) and all our work was based around pub conversations rather than having any proper funding but there was some serious knowledge there, watching him plucking formulae from thin air and writing them on beer mats was pretty impressive

We briefly discussed and came up with some plans for using the Wankel as an external combustion engine to get around the emissions / apex seal wear issues - it works rather well as a low-rpm turbine, but it wouldn't have been practical for car use.

So we went on to looking into an idea of mine for a truly 'green' diesel - using cold-pressed algae oil with methane fumigation to burn the soot particles fully. Theory was great but I didn't have the spare cash to create the diesel so we reworked it with lpg injection / rapeseed oil on an old Montego to test the theory with a modified diesel / lpg ratio. Worked pretty well given the limitations of the platform, and in theory the methane / diesel would have been effectively carbon-negative since cold pressed algae oil introduces no new carbon monoxide or dioxide and needs very little refining, and methane is of course an environmentally damaging by-product of many farming methods.

But we gave up when it became clear the project wasn't going to get any tax breaks, ULEZ exemptions or anything else, and the US government funding to the NREL for genetically modified algae research was cut, effectively ending any chance a proper 'future fuel' would come out of algae research since everything else in the public domain was being done by crowd-funded snake oil privateers who didn't have a clue what they were doing. He went back to playing with jet engines and I turned up the lpg injection on my Montego and had great fun embarrassing BMW drivers since high levels of lpg injection in a diesel acts like nitrous in a petrol car

 

[DaveMcT]

The Fiat and VW 1.9 four cylinder and 2.4 five cylinder diesels were a joint effort, dating back to the 1980s with indirect cylinder heads. The Fiat same capacity Fiat JTD and VW TDI came along in the early 1990s. The designs evolved and diverged over the years.

 

[DaveMcT]

The US Aquatic Species Project estimated that $100 Billion (sorry can't find the reference) of pump priming money could allows algal oils to replace all fossil oil fuels in USA using desert and marginal lands with salt water ponds growing algae. Obviously, it never went anywhere after basic research.The money got spent on Gulf Wars and whatever other proxy war suited the suits. It was also a Jimmy Carter project so that was that.

However, no matter you cut it, the complexity of aquaculture to grow your fuel is far more costly than simply digging it out of the ground and throwing the waste into the atmosphere.

1992 - https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5259.pdf
1989 - https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/3579.pdf

Wikipedia says "The costs were significantly lower than the costs of conventional fuel production to the environment and society." but offers no calculations to support that statement.

Aquatic Species Program - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[mj2k]

The US Aquatic Species Project estimated that $100 Billion (sorry can't find the reference) of pump priming money could allows algal oils to replace all fossil oil fuels in USA using desert and marginal lands with salt water ponds growing algae. Obviously, it never went anywhere after basic research.The money got spent on Gulf Wars and whatever other proxy war suited the suits. It was also a Jimmy Carter project so that was that.

However, no matter you cut it, the complexity of aquaculture to grow your fuel is far more costly than simply digging it out of the ground and throwing the waste into the atmosphere.

1992 - https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5259.pdf
1989 - https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/3579.pdf

Wikipedia says "The costs were significantly lower than the costs of conventional fuel production to the environment and society." but offers no calculations to support that statement.

Aquatic Species Program - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I was in contact with a guy from the NREL about this project (informally) back in the day, he was quite bitter when the funding for it was cut unsurprisingly. It does seem very much like a lost opportunity though - privateers took over the research once the government funding was removed, and since most of them were 'get rich quick' schemes the interest in algal research died down with each subsequent failure (and no doubt the MD of the company concerned buying a nice house in the Bahamas with the profits), so I doubt there will be much appetite for future research, unless this whole EV thing goes pear-shaped.

I did love this project from a privateer startup though, not sure if it's still going but if the algae used in the 'cleaning process' could be harvested for fuel, effectively some algae-based fuel would become carbon-negative

Startup uses Algae to Clean Pollutants from Industrial Flue Stack Gases

“Our technology allows the use of fossil fuels as a clean energy source, “said Bob Mroz, President and CEO of HY-TEK Bio. You can use oil, natural gas, methane and even coal and biomass as an energy source, but without greenhouse gas emissions.”

www.co2meter.com